Cha Siu Bao

This cooking project was so much fun. Probably cause I got to do it with my friend Jessica...oh and the help of our two cute daughters :)  These are a very popular Asian food.  We ate a lot of them when we went to China last year and let me tell you we nailed the recipe and they tasted so authentic. 

Jessica did make the meat mixture before our afternoon project to allow the flavours of the meat to be enhanced.  We made the dough in an afternoon and put all the buns together that same day. 

Once all the buns were filled we put them onto cookie sheet covered in parchment paper and we did an egg wash over the buns.  This helps them to get a nice brown colour while cooking. 

Now they are ready to hit the oven. 

They come out looking deliciously golden brown on top :) 

What a fun day of cooking! 

Pork Filling

1.5 pound piece pork belly

Marinade

1/2 teaspoon 5 spice powder

2 tablespoons  honey

2 tablespoons Shaoxing cooking wine (or sherry)

1 tablespoon hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon thai chili sauce

1 tablespoon Chinese dark soy sauce

1 tablespoon kiwi, pureed

2 teaspoons oyster sauce

2 cloves garlic, grated

Mix the ingredients for the marinade together in a Ziploc bag. The maltose is a little tough to incorporate but it’s okay if there are some lumps as these will eventually dissolve, just make sure there are no big clumps.

If your pork belly has skin, use a sharp knife to remove it. Add the pork belly to the marinade and push out as much air as possible so the meat is completely surrounded by marinade. Let it sit in the fridge for at least 2 days, flipping the bag over every to ensure it’s evenly marinated.

To roast your char siu, preheat the oven to 275 degrees F and move the rack to the upper middle position. Set an elevated wire rack on a rimmed baking sheet and lay the marinated pork belly on the rack, saving the marinade for later. Put the pan in the oven and let it roast for 1 hour or until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees F. Remove the pan from the oven, then move the oven rack to the top position and turn the heat up to “broil”.

Baste the pork with the reserved marinade, then broil it until dark and glossy with the edges just slightly charred. Flip the meat over and baste again, allowing the second side to color and char as well.

Slice your finished char siu.

Jany Lou's Buns

Note: This recipe makes quite a bit of dough, serving size ~40-50 buns

-3 cups water

-1/2 cup sugar

-2 pkg instant (quick rise) yeast

Add above ingredients together and let sit for 10 minutes (Dissolve sugar in water).

-7 tbsp olive oil

-2.5 tsp salt

-2 eggs (beaten)

Add above to first mixture and stir.

Add 7-8 cups flour, stir mixture together and knead until dough is smooth and not sticky

Let dough rise for 1 hour and punch down once.

Tear off a small ball of dough from the batch (size of a mandarin orange/lime -smaller buns OR size of orange -bigger buns)

Flatten the ball in your hands and gently stretch it out (leave the middle a bit thicker than the edges)

Put a spoonful of filling in the middle of the flattened dough

Pinch together the ends in a circular fashion to seal the dough around the filling. Give the ends a little twist to seal it. (This makes the bun shape)

Turn the bun over and put pinched side down on a baking sheet (I use parchment paper on top of the baking sheet)

Before baking the buns, brush a little egg wash on top of the buns. This will make them brown nicely and shiny (I beat a whole egg)

Bake at 350F for ~20 min until the buns are nicely browned. Don't over bake, since the bottom of the buns can get hard/burn.

Cool on rack if not going to be served immediately (otherwise bottom will get soggy)

Pumpkin Monkey Bread

With fall in the air I just couldn't wait any longer to make one of our favorite fall treats!  Pumpkin Monkey Bread.  This year I did make two in loaf pans but also I decided to try making a batch in a muffin tin.  They turned out great and were a hit this morning for breakfast.  I found the recipe over at Barbra Bakes however I did make a few changes. 

Ingredients

Dough

2 ¼  tsp yeast

½ cup water, warm

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons table salt

1 cup unsweetened canned pumpkin puree

1 large egg

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Brown Sugar Coating

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), melted

Icing

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 or 2 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, put together the warm water, yeast and 1 TBSP sugar. Let sit for 10 minutes until the yeast is frothy.
2. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, salt, pumpkin and egg.  Add mixture to yeast mixture.
3. Add  flour and knead dough with the dough hook until dough clings to the hook and almost cleans the sides. About five minutes.
4. Turn dough onto lightly floured counter and knead briefly to form smooth, round ball. Coat large bowl with nonstick cooking spray. Place dough in bowl and coat surface of dough with cooking spray. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm, draft free place until dough doubles in size, 60 to 90 minutes.
5. While dough is rising, mix brown sugar and spices together in bowl. Place melted butter in second bowl. Set aside for the sugar coating.
6. Remove dough from bowl, and pat into rough 8-inch square. Using bench scraper or knife, cut dough into 64 pieces.
7. Roll each dough piece into a ball. Working one at a time, dip balls in melted butter, allowing excess butter to drip back into bowl. Roll in brown sugar mixture, then layer balls in a muffin tin that has been lined with muffin cups (I use the silicone muffin liners), staggering seams where dough balls meet as you build layers.
8. Cover pan tightly with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator overnight. (If you want to bake it immediately, let rise for 30 - 45 minutes in a warm, draft-free place before baking.)
9. Approximately one hour before you want to bake your Monkey Bread, remove it from the refrigerator and let the dough come to room temperature and the dough will begin to rise. (It will have risen some in the refrigerator overnight.)
10. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Unwrap pan and bake until top is deep brown and caramel begins to bubble around edges, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes.
11. For the icing: Add a small amount of milk or cream to icing sugar until a desired consistency is reached.
12. Drizzle icing over warm monkey bread, letting it run down the sides of the bread. Serve warm.

Notes

Substitute 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon plus 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg and 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves for 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice.

Overnight method: I made the overnight pumpkin bread for Thanksgiving morning. I made the dough about two weeks ahead of time. After the first rise, I shaped the dough in to balls and froze them spread out on a cookie sheet covered with plastic wrap. Once they were frozen, I put them in a Freezer Ziploc. Then the afternoon before Thanksgiving I let them thaw in the bag on the counter, it took about an hour, then dipped them in butter and the sugar mixture and put them in the greased bundt pan. I put it in the fridge overnight and in the morning proceeded with the recipe as written.

Apple Picking

This weekend we packed up the family and headed out to the apple orchard.  It was such a beautiful day it felt like it could have been a hot July day.  

We had to make sure the apples tasted yummy before we filled up our apple bag :)

LOTS of people had been there already and gotten the lower apples so in order to get the really good apples we had to be creative.  

Eben learned a trick to get the apples all shinny so he worked on polishing them up for us.

And what is a trip to the orchard without taking a family photo!  

 When I asked everyone what they wanted to do with our apples each of us had a different apple treat that they wanted so we will make

Apple sauce for Eben, apple Crisp for daddy, apple Nachos for Lady J and apple pizza for mama.   Looks like I will need to do a blog post on our apple pizza :)

Granola Bites

These are a simple and a delicious snack that our family really enjoys.  The thing I like about these types of granola treats is you can add whatever you want to them so that your family will love them. 

I usually follow the recipe from A Kitchen Addiction  to a tee cause they are very tasty but yesterday I didn't have any flax or oat bran so I had to substitute; here is what I did. 

1 1/2 cups of oats

1 cup of Rice Krispies

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup natural peanut butter

1/2 cup of local honey

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

2 packages of peanut M&M's

1.  In a bowl combine all your dry ingredients

2.  Mix in your peanut butter and honey

3.  Refrigerate for 15 minutes if the mixture is too sticky to form into balls. 

4.  Form into 1 inch balls 

5.  Store in the refrigerator or freezer

Let me know if you try any fun combinations!  And for more snack attack ideas check out my pinterest board. 

Cereal Squares

This recipe was a very impromptu  creation after receiving a box of peanut butter cheerios from a friend.   The cereal was loosing its crispness so I decided to toast it in the oven.  This little trick has saved us from throwing out cereal so many times.  

After it was toasted I decided to use up some open bags of marshmallows, that were left over from our summer adventures, and make some cereal squares with them. 

I followed the basic rice crispy recipe by melting a little bit of butter in a pot along with the marshmallows.   When the mixture was nice and gooey I added in the cereal.  

Because I wasn't making a large batch I decide to put it into a pie plate.  

Once the squares had set I just took the parchment paper out of the dish and cut up the squares like a pie. 

The kids loved these little treats!  

So next time you have some "going" stale cereal be sure to toast it up and make something yummy from it. 

Back to School

This week we started our first week as a 1st grader!!!  And you will never guess what happened the night before school...yup Eben lost his first tooth.  He was sooooo excited to lose his tooth right before school started. 

The week before school started we had a count down to grade 1 written on their bathroom mirror.  Each night Eben crossed off how many more days before school started.  He was excited to find a new message on Tuesday morning that said Welcome to Grade 1.

We started our morning off with of course the first day of school photo shoot using these cute printables from I heart nap time. 

I had some fun activities planned for the 1st day that I found on pinterest.   So we spent most of the morning doing some back to school activities.  Eben loved doing this back to school word search.  He also filled out an all about EBEN sheet; which I will keep in this school portfolio.  

Another little game we played was this back to school word scramble. I cut all the letters out and Eben rearranged them finding 2,3,4 and 5+ letter words.  He did so well at it I think he is ready to play boggle.

Then we got to the work that we are going to be doing.  One thing that we need to work on his hand writing.  So last year at our annual homeschool conference I pick up this hand writing without tears book.  Eben is doing good at it so far.

Another thing I did before school started was create a month of supper meals and a month of lunch meals.  That way I could just look in the morning at our menu; take out what I need to for supper and prepare anything I need to for lunch time.  The first day I had muffins planned for lunch so during our "recess" time I mixed the muffins together and had them baking during our second part of school.  I am so happy I spent some time to do these two menus it has saved so much time this week knowing what I am doing :)  Today I am stepping outside the menu a bit since we had breadstick last night for supper and have a few left over I will serve them today for lunch with pizza sauce instead of the homemade lunchables that were planned...so even with a plan you can be spontaneous. 

Princess birthday cake

This weekend we were so blessed to celebrate Lady J's 3rd birthday!!   It was a very fun weekend for her as she caught on very quickly (not sure if its a girl thing or not) that her birthday was coming up.  She knew who she wanted to invite, what she wanted for a cake and what she wanted for presents.  We took notes and did our best to give her a princess party.  

When she told me a couple of weeks ago that she wanted a princess cake I immediately thought about the kind of cake that you stick a barbie in; when I showed her a picture and asked is this what you want she said YES.  So plans began to form about how I was going to make this thing.  Thankfully I have some GREAT mama friends who are awesome at this kind of stuff and gave me lots of advice and tools to get the job done.  

I decided for the "dress" part of the cake I would use a cake mix, I know I said it, a boxed cake mix and bake it in the pampered chef 8 cup mixing cup.   When the cake was finished cooking/cooling I did carve out a little hole in the top with an apple corer for the barbie to fit in.  I had thought at first her whole body would fit but the cake didn't turn out to be that high so I had to remove her legs, thankfully its a "newer" type barbie who's legs come on and off easily.  I did that Friday and froze the cake so on Saturday when I went to frost it it would not have crumbs. 

Saturday we got to work...Jaelyn actually entertained me with her pre-party get up.  

When I went to decorate the cake I simply wrapped the barbies bottom half with some plastic wrap and put some frosting in the hole and placed her in.  

To frost the cake I did a first coat where I just spread frosting all over the "dress" part and then let cool in the fridge. 

Then I began the decorating part using a flower tip (I think that is what its called) starting at the bottom and working my way up to the top.  I did take some breaks putting the cake in the fridge to harden the icing. 

The day of the party our house was pink pok-a-dots.  We had party hats, popcorn boxes and banners.  We did get some princess plates and napkins as well.

The cake was a hit!!  Lady J loved it so that is all that mattered.  

Happy 3rd birthday Lady J!!!  

If you need a recipe here you go.

Boxed Cake Mix
Icing (went to a bakery and got a tub of white and dyed it pink myself)


Some tips:
If cooking in a 8 cup measuring cup be sure to bake at 325 for 1 hour or until the centre of cake is set.
Cut whole in cake before freezing
Freeze cake before icing to help with crumbs
Ice cake first, let set then begin decorative work